


Listen

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Spooks | MI-5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:23:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1633727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ros, learning how to lead her team. [Post Season 7]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Listen

**Author's Note:**

> I found the "Ros" prompt a huge challenge (!) so thank you to bugiarda for her prompts and ultra fast beta. I most sincerely hope that you were not spoiled, greyslostwho, because I worked out from your LJ you were in the UK, so I am just trusting you have seen S7.?
> 
> Written for greyslostwho

 

 

When Ros returns to the Grid, it is so quiet that she checks her ears for signs of blast damage. Ear to sleeve, she cannot hear the tick of her watch, but then she remembers that she has given it away. She tries the wall clock, the coffee machine, the dripping tap, and she is disappointed to find that she can hear them all. 

The Grid is empty, but she finds Malcolm at the listening station in the communications suite, eyes closed in concentration.

"Malcolm," she says, impatient for noise. "Harry not back yet?"

He doesn't respond until she taps him on the shoulder, and then he opens his eyes briefly, and closes them again, unsurprised. He is wearing incongruously large headphones, like an elderly DJ.

"No."

"What are you doing?"

"Listening."

"To what?"

He looks briefly exasperated. "Numbers stations."

"There's a broadcast?" Everything about Ros tenses, rapid and pleasurable. It is the response she craves.

"There are the usual approximately two and a half thousand broadcasts," says Malcolm reprovingly.

"Tiresias will respond." Ros is firm. "Somehow a message will go out to them to scramble. They'll fear they've been infiltrated."

"They had been," says Malcolm absently.

"Are you sure there's nothing?"

Malcolm takes off his headphones and looks at her with a sort of tolerant irritation. "There are two thousand five hundred broadcasts on multiple frequencies, Ros. There may be two thousand, five hundred and one today, or maybe there are two thousand, four hundred and ninety nine."

"A code of omission?"

" _Ros_. Have you eaten? Been to the medical officer? Don't you think you need to rest?"

"Don't be ridiculous," says Ros automatically. "I want to know what they're going to do next. I want to know if they're being withdrawn. I want to know is there a backup weapon. I want to know if we were completely betrayed. Do they know our codes? Our safehouses? All our officers undercover? Do they know about our officers abroad? Are we safe ourselves - the four of us? Harry?"

Malcolm looks at her. "Rather a lot to hope for from a two minute radio broadcast."

Ros pulls together her most withering stare but Malcolm, headphones already back in place, is oblivious.

* * *

Lucas appears after an unexpectedly brief visit to the medical officer.

"Why aren't you in hospital?" enquires Ros for formality's sake, but she doesn't care and he ignores her, looking around at the empty Grid.

"It's just a graze. Where's Harry?"

"God knows. His phone's off. He'll have gone straight to the Home Secretary."

Lucas glances at her, and she knows he notices the tight planes of her face and the way her hands are balled in her pockets, but his voice is carefully casual. 

"You do know it's over, don't you?"

"It's never over," says Ros. "How am I supposed to know what's going to happen now?"

Lucas considers this. "You can't," he suggests, leaning back against his desk, folding his arms. "You'll just have to wait until the Tiresias network reacts, and then try and respond. Their sleepers are everywhere and they're going to start activating them. You can't micromanage this, Ros; it's going to be too big and too fast. Spread the team out. Cover Parliament and the major civil services. Let them use their initiative."

"You are one third of my team, Lucas." Ros doesn't like the sound of her own voice. Too brittle, and brittle means weak.

He grins. "Well aren't you lucky. Initiative is my middle name."

"It's not good enough. _Wait and see_ is not a plan."

"Not good enough for who? For Harry?"

"For me," snaps Ros. "I'm not Adam, Lucas. I'm not running this by my heart and my guts." Lucas smiles, just a trace, but it is enough. She imagines without difficulty the track of his mind. Other parts of Adam's anatomy were in charge of Section D, he'd say, with the brief flicker of his eyes that means laughter, and even though she might once have agreed, today nothing is funny.

"I'm not in this to make friends, and I don't go and wash my juniors' feet and mop their snotty noses and we don't all go down the bloody pub and get _matey_." She sounds savage, she knows. She would give anything for Adam's easy informality today, for _everything will crinkle out_ , for officers who would live and die for her instead of pursuing their own incomprehensible agendas. "I want a plan to identify these sleepers and operational officers to carry it out and that's all. Is that too much to ask?"

"No." Lucas' voice is mild. 

"Then don't talk to me about reacting. I'm not waiting around for more near misses. I want to be in charge."

"Really," says Lucas wryly.

"They're going to strike back. Tiresias had seven lives."

"Wouldn't pay too much attention to the name." Lucas' eyes are alive with amusement. "Tiresias also said women had better orgasms than men, you know."

"My kind of guy," says Ros reflexively, but her heart isn't in it and both of them know it.

* * *

Jo, when she returns, is an indefinable relief. Jo is normality - cups of tea and small talk and tentative attempts at female solidarity. She is carrying a sandwich and a bar of chocolate, but Ros can't remember when she last felt hungry.

"Do you know I just got completely cold-shouldered in the cafeteria? They seem to think our bad luck is infectious."

"Treachery is infectious," Lucas corrects.

Jo, glancing first at Ros and then at Lucas, seems to think it is safer to ignore this. "Anything happening?"

"No," says Ros grimly. "You should change your flat. None of our safehouses can be considered intact."

"I'll do it today." Jo glances into Harry's empty office and raises her eyebrows at Lucas, but he only shakes his head.

"Back to the listening post, then," says Jo, to nobody in particular.

"What are you listening to?" 

Jo shrugs. "Chatter. There'll be some kind of reprisal now the bomb's clearly not gone off, won't there? Or will they just make a run for it? Out of the country or deep underground? What do you think?"

"I think we're going to have to wait and see," says Lucas, aggravatingly placid, and the Grid lapses into the listening silence that Ros hates. She gets to her feet instinctively, but there is nowhere to go.

* * *

Ros can see that her pacing is irritating Lucas. It is a small pleasure to ignore his discreet nods towards the door, but eventually he sighs and gets up to block her path.

"Outside, Ros," he says, and though she glares at him, she follows him up to the roof.

"Are we going to duel or something?"

"You'd beat me," says Lucas gravely. "Although if it would help work off some of your pent-up aggression..."

"I have no pent-up aggression," hisses Ros. By the time she hears and understands herself, Lucas is already fighting a laugh.

"All right. Fine. I take your point. What is it you want?" 

"I think it's what _you_ want that's the problem."

"A new pair of high heels?" Ros leans back against the parapet, ignoring the view. 

"How about a few scapegoats to kill?"

"I'd rather have the shoes if it's all the same to you." It is a smooth deflection, Ros' favourite defence, but it does not deter Lucas in the slightest.

"Are you looking for revenge, Ros?"

"For what? Yet another half-arsed attempt to devastate London? Why would I bother?"

"For Adam," says Lucas. She is pleased to see that he looks a little apprehensive of her reaction.

"I've had that already, haven't I?"

"Not enough, is it? Not one you get a taste for it." He lets just a little of his understanding into his eyes, and the knowledge that she is being manipulated doesn't stop her feeling sorry for him. 

"What would you know about revenge? You were so grateful for Blighty and fish and chips and the Service that you crawled right back into Harry's lap even when you thought he'd betrayed you." 

"I kept my options open."

"Did you, indeed?" Ros is tempted to believe him. It would make Lucas her equal and her defence. But she knows what Lucas is, recognised him a mile off, no more capable of true treachery than Harry. 

Lucas sighs. "No. For God's sake Ros, what's wrong with you? You're like a caged bear."

"What a charmer you are. No wonder that little Russian girl waited eight years for you." 

"She didn't," says Lucas, startled out of strategy.

"I know," says Ros.

* * *

Jo is more tentative but no less transparent.

"I'm worried about Harry." She catches Ros by the coffee machine. "He should have been in touch by now."

Ros recognises an opening gambit when she sees one. 

"It's only been a few hours," she says. "Haven't you got enough to worry about without Harry?"

Jo, surprisingly, grins. Ros has never been able to understand what drew someone like Jo into the Service. She suspects it was Adam and his boundless charisma, and she finds herself curiously sympathetic to this girl who has been just as susceptible as Ros herself. Not, of course, that she will ever let Jo guess this.

"Don't suppose you've heard anything interesting?"

Jo shakes her head. "Nothing." She hesitates. "Do you want some more... _active_ intelligence gathering?"

Ros pauses. She knows what Jo's offering. Their unspoken agreement to keep Jo away from the most exposed parts of fieldwork has saved the Section the ignominy of more psychiatrists and seems to have kept Jo on the level, but she's an asset they can't afford to waste now.

"Maybe." Ros, unusually, finds herself searching for compromise. "When I have a better idea of who to target."

"Thank you," says Jo, unexpectedly. Something of Ros' surprise must be visible, because she adds, "Adam...Well. He wouldn't have let me."

"I'm not Adam," says Ros for the second time that day. "He consistently underestimated women, you know. All the bloody time."

Something changes on Jo's face, a flicker of expression that Ros can't pin down. "No," she says. "No - not all the time." 

Ros opens her mouth to argue, but Jo has turned away.

* * *

When Harry has made no contact by evening, Ros calls her depleted team into the briefing room. 

"I think Harry is probably still with the FSB in some capacity," she starts. Jo and Malcolm both stare at her. 

"They negotiated a deal and we don't know what Harry's end was," Lucas clarifies hastily, seeing Jo's face. "He may have agreed to give them information."

"Tiresias goes higher and older that the FSB's little pawns in England," says Ros. "And Tiresias is today's fight. So I suggest we focus ourselves on making sure we keep control of their activities."

"What activities?" Malcolm sits back in his chair. "There's nothing to suggest anything's happening so either it's not, or it's well under the radar."

"I've listened in on all the usual sources," agrees Jo.

"Then listening is not enough," says Ros. 

"Let me go and get friendly with some potential players," says Jo. "I used to do this all the time, Ros. You know I can..."

"No," says Lucas abruptly.

"Lucas..."

"No. If listening isn't enough, Ros, then talk."

"Talk?" 

"Yes, talk. Malcolm, you're up to a spot of shortwave broadcasting, I imagine?"

Malcolm does not dignify this with an answer, only gives him a reproving look across the table.

"Talk to Tiresias. All of them. Use the number station. You have their ear. You know they'll be listening. Use the same frequency they used, encode lightly, and talk."

"What will I be saying, exactly?"

Lucas shrugs. "How about, we know who you are? And we'll give you forty eight hours to get clear of the country?"

"We don't know who they are."

"That's true."

"And I don't suppose we'll give them forty eight hours?" 

"No."

"It's risky." Ros regrets this as soon as soon as the words leave her mouth. She has never cared about risk and she won't let herself start now.

Lucas just looks at her.

Ros opens her mouth but she is empty of objections. "I suppose it will keep us occupied until Harry gets back," she says at last. Her voice is just as she intends it, flat and laconic and final, and Jo and Malcolm start to get up, talking; another day's work, another plan, another operation.

Lucas sits at the end of the table and watches her.

"Thank you," she says with some effort, pushing the papers into her dossier. "It's a good idea."

He looks mildly surprised. "You drove me to it. Anything to stop the pacing."

She refuses to smile. "I should have thought of it."

Lucas stands up and puts his hands in his pockets. "I've had plenty of time to learn how they think." He makes for the door. "You were born for this, you know," he adds casually. "Running the show."

Ros tries not to stare at him. "It's only till Harry gets back," she says at last.

Lucas looks at her oddly, and for a moment she thinks he is going to speak, but then he turns and she is left alone in the briefing room, to wait.

* * *

 


End file.
